Dilemma

[EGNX]

I have just downloaded the FSX demo, and I can produce stuff like this at around 15-20 fps with settings on quite high and autogen off.

But as soon as I turn autogen onto the lowest setting my frames plummet to 7 fps...  >:(

The question is, is it going to be worth me buying FSX or will I just become frustrated when it doesn't run fantastically well. And am I better off going with FS2004?

BTW - Is there anyway to stop the time limiter on the demo?

Cheers.

Luke

[justpassingthrough]

I will repeat what FSX Dev's have posted....

The SPARCE Autogen setting (slider at 1) in FSX is 1.5x the autogen load as FS9 with autogen in FS9 set to MAX. If you do not intend to edit the FSX.cfg file with the autogen restriction lines and do not have a DX10 card, they said to leave light bloom and autogen OFF and play with the rest. I do not think the demo allows certain edits to the configuration file but I could be wrong. In any case, it would not be a fair test anyway because the demo will not load your system down like the real software will.

The demo is no where near the load of the real game. With the real game the additional loads will make the light bloom you show in you screeshoot drop the frame rate by as much as 7-10 frames.


FSX has great advantages over FS9 (the flight dynamics are much more realistic) and a SP1 update is coming around the beginning of March which addresses scenery and performance issues but they will not be trimming back anything for lesser systems.

It would be best for you to post your CPU/Memory/Motherboard/Video card to see if what you have will be worth the investment of FSX.

What I can tell you is if you are not running a more modern rig with preferably, 2 gigs of memory (but 1gig will work), and at least a 7900 series video card or higher (512mb memory but 256 will work) .... do not expect to run with sliders very high and you will need to do some tweaking.... much more than with FS9.

Even those with DX10 8800 cards do not get perfection from FSX. The hardware that will allow full use of FSX wont be produced for some time. With the advent of DX10 and the compounded load (even with that format being able to handle more) it is unclear how hardware will fair under DX10, so it could be another year or more before the hardware catches up to FSX.


With FS9 and fairly reasonable priced hardware you can fly with max visuals if you set it up right.. and it requires some manual tweaking of the FS9.cfg file to achieve that goal. With FSX, its give and take even if you have the most up to date hardware. If its not up to date, its allot more give than take and you must be willing to accept that.

[EGNX]

Here' my comp specs.
 
Intel Pentium D 915 Dual Core Processor
2.8GHz, 800MHz FSB, 2 X 2MB Cache
MS Windows Vista Premium
1GB DDR2 RAM
512MB nVidia GeForce 7500LE Graphics

What do you think? Worth it or not?

[justpassingthrough]

[quote]Here' my comp specs.

[EGNX]

I'll take that into mind. Thanks for the advice  ;)

[justpassingthrough]

[quote]I'll take that into mind. Thanks for the advice

[BAW0343]

If your running the demo at that speed over water, AND over land go ahead and get it. For me the demo was a pretty good indicator of what my FPS in the real thing would be like.  However unless you plan to stay out of big airports, get more ram. Also totally forget autogen, but push the ground textures up if you can. I run ground at 90% no autogen, no lightbloom, and scenery complexity at dense (so I get SOME gates  ;D ) and I get 20-30 FPS in the country and 11-15 at major airports. I could probably inprove airports if i got rid of some of the ground vehicles but i like them  ;D  Good luck! If you can tho I would upgrade,  maby wait for DX10 to come out however.  :D

[trojan rabbit]

got the same problem here egnx, us eccentric english people have to stick together
8-)

[EGNX]

So. Do you think it will be better for me to buy FSX and run it at low settings to achieve good FPS, rather than buying FS9?

[Hagar]

I would go for FS9. You should be able to pick up a copy at a reasonable price now FSX has been released.

You might like to confirm that FS9 will run on Vista first. It should be compatible but several people have reported problems.

[bbstackerf]

I upgraded my desktop to Vista Home Premium yesterday. I have both FS9 and SimX running fine on both counts. Obviously I have to run SimX at a lower settings, but I keep an enjoyable 20 FSP on SimX. FS9 I have all sliders except weather at max.

I only have a 6800 Ultra card on a 2.8 ghx processor. I do have 4 gigs (3.25 usable) of RAM though. Still, in all, SimX runs pretty good with my settings.

Keni

[trojan rabbit]

I have integrated intel 3d agp graphics (whatever that means) and did the same as you except with the aircraft quality (midlow) and i can't get reflections or any good water textures(its at max too)

its irkitating

[ATI_7500]

An integrated graphics card is just a chip on the mainboard, so don't expect any real performance/quality from it.

Get a real GFX card.
Even the cheap ones are better than everything that's glued on your mobo.

[trojan rabbit]

we called dell and they said our comp wouldn't take a better graphics card.

[ATI_7500]

The CPU and Ram have nothing to do with graphics card compatibility.

Your mainboard might be missing a slot for the graphics card.

Solution here: Buy a new mainboard.


Bottom line for me: Dell = idiots.